


Nothing

by emptyskv



Category: Captain America, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicidal actions, Suicide, honestly me too, trigger warning, uh steve is really fucking depressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:49:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emptyskv/pseuds/emptyskv
Summary: Steve is depressed. This is how he copes. Maybe the only way he can.





	Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Major trigger warning for depressive thoughts and suicide talk.

     Steve got up. He didn't want to, didn't particularly see the need to, but he got up anyway, because that's what he was supposed to do. That's what Sam told him he should do, to keep himself sane, and to keep all of the bad thoughts at bay. After the incident last month on the roof, and the one the week before that in the bathroom, and the one before that-well, safe to say, maybe he should listen to Sam.

     So, he got up. He took a shower, got dressed, forced down breakfast and brushed his teeth. Then…well, then, nothing. Then he sat there, in the chair in the living room, the one that he sat in everyday for hours on end staring at nothing, doing nothing. His head was propped up by one of his arms, and the other hand clutched the piece of paper that he never went anywhere without. He wasn't particularly doing anything ritualistic in those long hours between the time that he got up to the time that he went to bed. Some days he remembered and allowed himself to mourn. Others, well others he couldn't find the motivation, the WANT to do anything other than stare at the wall. Sometimes he went two or three days without talking to another person, and he found that he liked the way the silence felt. Everything seemed frozen, suspended. It felt right that he shouldn't be moving on, that nothing should be moving on.  
 

     Sam thought differently. He told him ,"He wouldn't want you to live like this, Steve, because this isn't living. This is existing, and you and I both know that there's a big fucking difference between the two." Steve would always nod, looking into Sam's eyes to show that he understood, but, really, how could it be said that Bucky wouldn't want him to live like this? He didn't know what Bucky would want, never would again.

     In the months before, Steve could tell something was…off. Different. He just figured it was Bucky readjusting to being in the world again and having to do normal things that he hadn't had to do in his time as an assassin. But, there were all of these things that he couldn't get out of his mind. The way that Bucky would like to look at him a second too long after they had finished laughing over something, the stuff that Bucky slowly started getting rid of, saying that he didn't need a ton of things, that he wanted to live minimally, the way his hugs always lasted too long, as if he wanted to commit the feeling to memory, or wanted Steve to have something to hold onto. And, the night of, as Steve turned over in bed after thoroughly kissing Bucky goodnight, he said "see you in the morning" and Bucky said "goodnight" and it sounded so much like "goodbye" that Steve had physically hit himself over not hearing the tone of his voice or seeing the look in his eyes. Instead, Steve had fallen asleep like it was any other night, had slept through Bucky getting up out of the bed, grabbing the gun out of his bedside drawer, putting a silencer on it, and going to the roof of their apartment building to blow his brains out. And, when Steve had woken up early in the morning wondering why Bucky's side of the bed was cold and went looking for him at his favorite place, he couldn't even find it within himself to be shocked or anything other than empty. And that's what he still was. Empty. Nothing.

     Steve had had a few psychotic breaks in the months afterward, had screamed and cried and hurt himself and hurt others and broken things he shouldn't have broken and lashed out at people he shouldn't have lashed out at. Overall though, he was just empty. Dazed. He felt as though he was suffocating, like there was a weight sitting on his chest crushing his lungs and choking out his will to even continue breathing. A couple of weeks ago, on one of his rare trips out, him and Sam had gone to a coffee shop. Steve had felt like he had made it through the night relatively unscathed, even feeling up to being able to laugh, genuinely laugh, for the first time in a long time. It had felt okay. Then, as he was leaving, he was stopped by someone, just a kid, really, and asked for an autograph. Sam tried to move him along, to tell the kid that he wasn't giving out autographs, but Steve stopped him. Got out a pen. Felt like, since he was feeling normal for one of the first times in a long time, why not act like it? After he had finished signing the autograph, the boy smiled and said, "I can't wait to tell my friends that I met you! You're a legend!" And Steve had felt his smile freeze on his face, had felt himself tense up, had felt Sam grab him by the arm and haul him out of there and force him into the passenger seat of his car and drive. And all the while he was thinking that what was the point of being of being a legend if you didn't have the person who made you feel like it was worth it to be legendary by your side?

     So, as Steve sat in his chair clutching the piece of paper day in and day out, he always came back to the same question; why had he not been enough? There was really no question of WHY Bucky had done it. You can take ten seconds to look at the tragic outline of Bucky's life and not doubt that he had a good reason to off himself. But, Steve just wanted to know, why hadn't he been enough for Bucky to stay for? Bucky had loved him. He said so in the final note that he wrote him, the note that Steve never stopped clutching or looking at to remind himself that he had loved and been loved. And Steve kept coming back to the same answer, one that he didn't like; it didn't matter how much someone loved you, or how much you meant to them, or how much they meant to you. In the end, you can't save people if they don't want to be saved. No amount of love or affection or attention will give someone who's hurting that bad a way out. The only thing you can do is show them that you're there and hope that they'll find it within to save themselves. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't, and it hurts so bad that it feels like it's ripping you in two, but the only thing you can do after something like that is to either fall with them or heal. Steve knew that he wanted to heal. To live. He knew it wouldn't happen today, maybe not even soon, but he knew that he wanted to move on. Not from Bucky, but from the thought that he hadn't been enough for Bucky to stick around for. And Steve knew that, no, it wasn't okay, but it would get better.

     As Steve let himself sink back into a depressive state, his last thought before closing his eyes and getting lost in his mind was that maybe this IS what Bucky would've wanted.


End file.
